Introduction to ecology and the abiotic environment

• Review Losos' study of anoles with this web-based animated tutorial.  You will need Multimedia's Shockwave plug-in to run the tutorial.
• Introduction to Biomes at Swarthmore College offers an excellent overview of key biome features. 
• Baileys' Eco-Regions (July 1995)  is a U.S. Forest Service document describing biomes (and their subdivisions), with clickable maps to guide you to each region.
•  Wild World @ nationalgeographic.com is an interactive map of the world's major terrestrial ecoregions.  Click on a region to read more about it.  Very cool!
•  Shades of Green: Earth's Forests covers both tropical and temperate forests.
•  Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Site Characterization  covers selected marine "biomes".
•  Meadowbrook Prairie Through the Year illustrates annual changes in a midwestern tall-grass prairie.
•  Indian Peaks Virtual Field Trip takes you through the major biomes along an elevational gradient in the Rocky Mountains.
•  Desert Life explores the climate, geology, and wildlife of North America's Southwestern deserts.

• Welcome to the NAAMP introduces the North American Amphibian Monitoring Project; see especially  Summary of Declines in Amphibians for an overview of this phenomenon and some of the causes investigators are studying. Check out  Amphibian Malformations and the  DAPTF Home Pages for more information.
• Read a great example of how sensory physiology affects feeding ecology at  Coastal Birds "Feel" Their Prey Under The Sand 
• For an overview of adaptation to extreme heat, check out Desert USA's pages on Desert Plant Survival and Desert Animal Survival.
• The name is deceiving; read the description of hive thermoregulation by Honeybees at Honeybee Simulation.
• Check out this nice essay (with beautiful pencil sketches) on Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpuls foetidus) by Craig Holdrege.

• Run the simulations of logistic and exponential growth at  Population Growth (follow the instructions for the "experiments" at each site).  Note especially how small changes in r produce big changes in growth rate and the relationship between early-stage logistic growth and exponential growth!
• Examine patterns of geographic distribution at  Breeding Bird Survey Summary and Analysis, version 96.4 .
• Canadian Geographic magazine has a nice article on  Lynx and hare cycles , including some great photos.
• United Nations—Economic and Social Development (this site links you to huge amounts of excellent information related to human population growth, resource use, and development issues important to conservation and biodiversity). 

• Write 2 sentences, each relating one specific item (fact, hypothesis, process, etc.)  in the article to one specific topic we've discussed in class.
• Write 3 ecological questions you have as a consequence of reading the article.
• Responses must be typed and submitted as hard copy or e-mail (to my work e-mail, with Bio 205 in the subject line) by Friday, 10/25.

• Coral bleaching results from a disruption of the mutalistic relationship between coral and zooxanthellae.  Read about the causes and consequences of this phenomenon at Coral Health-Related Literature Abstracts; check out maps of potential bleaching spots at  SST Anomaly Coral Bleaching Hotspots .  See also the related news stories:   Coral reefs: Are we doing too little too late? -October 22, 1998 and InSCIght - 24 October 1998 : Reef  Trouble .
• Enter  Lichen Land to find out more about this fascinating group of mutualisms.
• The Sea Slug Forum has some nice discussions of mutualism and commensalism in nudibranchs.  Browse the General Topics page, especially the sections on Symbiosis and Zooxanthellae.

• Ecological succession is beautifully illustrated (along with lots of other cool information) at  Plants and Animals of Mount St. Helens , a website featuring before-and-after photos of Mt. St. Helens.  The US Forest Service also has an excellent site at  Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument .  Finally, check out the Mount St. Helens Succession Collection, an archive of photographs taken since 1983.
• Another important model system for the study of succession has been the dunes of Lake Michigan; read about them at  Geology of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore . 
• Read a nice introduction to studies of plant succession at Glacier Bay, another major model system for succession.
• Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study - Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest - HBEF - HBES .  This is the homepage of (you guessed it!) the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, one of the most important sites for experimental ecosystems ecology in the country.  This site includes research summaries, data, and more.
• Human activities affect biogeochemical cycles.  The consequences of increasing greenhouse gases are detailed in the report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at  United Nations Environment Programme.
• Nutrient pollution, a common consequence of anthropogenic disturbance to nutrient cycling, leads to  "Red Tides" and Harmful Algal Blooms .  Check out this site for more information.

•  International Association for Landscape Ecology (IALE) is one of the foremost organizations promoting the study of landscape ecology. 
•  FireNet Information Network has links to a huge variety of sites with information about fire ecology, firefighting, and related topics.
•  Kissimmee River Restoration Project is the "official" website for this huge project; it has great photos and explanations of the history of the river and the processes being used to restore it.
•  The Fractal Microscope offers an in-depth look at fractal geometry, which is an important tool in landscape ecology.  Not for the faint-hearted, but it does have some beautiful pictures of Mandelbrot sets.
•  Conservation resources is my annotated list of websites devoted or related to conservation.  Listings include web sites of government agencies, international organizations, non-profits, and political groups, as well as sites exploring specific conservation issues.
•  Biogeography and Ecology Research Group - Physical Geography Research Cluster - School of Geography and the Environment from Oxford University has some nice information on island biogeography, especially in relation to studies on Krakatoa
•  Island Biogeography This essay by Paul Erhlich et al. relates island biogeography to the problem of the decline in eastern forest songbird species.
•  Biodiversity Hotspots - Cape Floristic Province -- for more information about this unique region
•  Nat'l Academy Press, Biographical Memoirs (1989), Robert Helmer MacArthur -- a nice, brief biographical sketch of this enormously influential ecologist.
•  FAO - Forestry - Home Page is the website for the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization; it offers lots of resources about forestry on a global scale.
• UNH Landsat Pathfinder: Tropical Deforestation and Habitat Fragmentation in the Amazon: Satellite Data from 1978 to 1988  is an on-line version of the Skole and Tucker study reported in your text.
•  EOS Educators' Visual Materials is a NASA site offering educational modules based on satellite imagery.  Check out  EOS Educators' Visual Materials -- Slide: Vanishing Old-Growth Forest in the Pacific Northwest to see an example of extensive deforestation in the U.S.
•   American Forests - People Caring for Trees & Forests since 1875 is the oldest non-profit conservation organization in the U.S.  Read their Regional Ecosysten Analysis - Chesapeake Bay Region for information about the extent and consequences of deforestation in our own region.